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UFO speculation is a field with its fair share of cranks and chancers, and usually with precious little of substance to grasp onto and analyze. The field has, however, enjoyed a renaissance since late 2017, when The New York Times published grainy videos showing what the Pentagon calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAPs) sighted on both coasts of the United States between 2004 and 2015. More videos followed, and eventually the Pentagon established an office to investigate UAPs, along with new procedures for military personnel to report sightings. The Director of National Intelligence eventually reported to Congress that over 140 cases of UAPs had been identified, and that “a handful” appear “to demonstrate advanced technology”:
Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.
The UAP Task Force holds a small amount of data that appear to show UAP demonstrating acceleration or a degree of signature management [i.e. trying to mask its presence like a stealth plane]. Additional rigorous analysis are necessary by multiple teams or groups of technical experts to determine the nature and validity of these data. We are conducting further analysis to determine if breakthrough technologies were demonstrated.
The existence of the videos and of this data were very curious, but hardly conclusive proof of alien life. They could simply have been some kind of strange weather phenomenon, a signals error, a human craft from a U.S. adversary, or even a secret U.S. government weapons program, or something else entirely terrestrial.
At the same time, much stranger rumors have swirled in the background. According to these rumors, the U.S. government has not only seen UAPs in the sky but is actually in possession of materials or craft which it has recovered and which it believes to be of non-human origin. No concrete evidence of this has ever emerged, and discussion of it has always taken place on the fringe - for instance by a company founded by Blink 182 singer Tom DeLonge, which claims to have access to such materials and to be testing them.
This week, though, something astonishing happened - a number of former or current high-ranking U.S. government employees went on the record to claim that such materials, including actual alien craft, do in fact exist. In an article for The Debrief reported by legendary UFO journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, we learned that a “whistleblower” named David Charles Grusch has filed a complaint alleging that evidence of such craft has been illegally hidden from Congress, and that as part of this complaint he has given to Congress and the intelligence community’s inspector general evidence to back up his claims. Grusch is a veteran of the U.S. intelligence community and for a time served on the Pentagon’s UAP task force. According to the report, his representative in the complaint is himself a former inspector general of the intelligence community.
Remarkably, Grusch’s comments in the article were reportedly cleared for publication by the Pentagon shortly before he left the government earlier this year. Here’s a quote from the article:
Grusch said the recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Analysis has determined that the objects retrieved are “of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures,” he said.
“We are not talking about prosaic origins or identities,” Grusch said, referencing information he provided Congress and the current ICIG. “The material includes intact and partially intact vehicles.”
Grusch isn’t the only one sticking his neck out in this article, which among other officials also quotes a serving intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) who says: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone.” In the same week, Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, also went on the record to claim that four witnesses have told him that there is a secret U.S. government program dedicated to exploiting materials recovered from off-world craft, and demanding that the government tell the public what it know.
What the hell?
Before you unsubscribe, let me say right away that I am not claiming that any of this is evidence that we are in fact not alone. Even Grusch does not claim to have provided any actual physical evidence to Congress, and so all we have right now is the word of what these officials think they know. But it is remarkable to see that well-placed people within the U.S. government - precisely the people who would know about this if it was true - claiming that it is in fact true.
Other possibilities, however, do exist. The first is that these officials might just be deluded or wrong. I do not want in any way to cast aspersions on Grusch or Jonathan Grey, the NASIC official quoted above. I don’t know anything about them beyond what I’ve read in The Debrief. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we have to look for other possible explanations. It’s important to remember that being an intelligence official and having a Top Secret security clearance does not automatically make you a stable or credible person. About 1.25 million people in the United States have Top Secret clearances and some of them hold outlandish beliefs. For instance, Michael Flynn, the conspiracy theory-spouting QAnon enthusiast who was one of Trump’s National Security Advisors, was also once the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Some of the claims being made in The Debrief article and a subsequent interview which Grusch gave sound particularly implausible. Grusch claims that there has been a decades-long ongoing “Cold War” between America and its adversaries to obtain access to crashed UFOs and exploit their technology, and Grey likewise says that it is not just America which has recovered such crafts and materials. If it sounds unlikely that the U.S. government could keep such a large secret for so long, it’s even more unlikely that multiple governments around the world could do so. Smaller claims would be more credible. In his interview, Grusch also claimed that unnamed governments had found “dead pilots”, meaning actual aliens, increasing the implausibility further.
Another possibility is that the whole thing is indeed a psychological operation which somehow serves the interests of parts of the U.S. government. It is U.S. intelligence officials who are making these claims, so it’s logical to ask what U.S. intelligence officials have to gain from them. Perhaps they are spooked by some advanced technology which has been developed by a U.S. adversary, and they need a way to cover for their inability to counter it. Perhaps they are trying to confuse adversaries who may have intelligence on advanced U.S. capabilities by pretending that the U.S. also has no idea what these advanced craft are. Perhaps it’s something we can’t even imagine because we don’t have Top Secret clearances.
Given these possibilities, it might be naive to end this post by calling for maximum transparency from the U.S. government about what it knows. But it’s hard to know what else to do. If there really is something to uncover here, then Congress and the public demanding accountability is the way to get at it, and Grusch and Grey and the others quoted in the article are American heroes. And assuming that the UAP videos at least do show the existence of a phenomenon which we truly do not understand, leaving research into it in the hands of the military is shortsighted, as I wrote in The Guardian several years ago:
Indeed, most of society seems ready to view UFOs as primarily a security threat to which a response by the military is required. This not only says something about the human psyche, but it comes at a cost for understanding the phenomenon. It stifles the free flow of information. It also means that those at the heart of the investigation are predisposed towards certain kinds of questions. The narrow matter of whether UFOs represent a national security risk is worth investigating, but it hardly exhausts what we need to know. A world in which most curiosity is snickered or shrugged at while the military monopolizes serious research is one with its priorities out of balance.
It’s time to tell the public everything there is to know - whatever it is.